John Cusack Movie:

				Label: MGM Salesrank: 40503
		Our Price: $21.27
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		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
Netherlands released, PAL/Region 2 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: Dutch ( Mono ), English ( Mono ), French ( Mono ), Spanish ( Mono ), Dutch ( Subtitles ), Finnish ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), Portuguese ( Subtitles ), Spanish ( Subtitles ), Swedish ( Subtitles ), Turkish ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN, SPECIAL FEATURES: Biographies, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: After The Atomic War the world is divided into three states. London is the capital of Oceania, ruled by a party who has total control over all its citizens. Winston Smith is one of the bureaucrats, rewriting history in one of the departments. One day he commits the crime of falling in love with Julia. They try to escape Big Brother's listening and viewing devices, but, of course, nobody can really escape...

SCREENED/AWARDED AT: BAFTA Awards, Fantasporto Awards,

Description of Nineteen Eighty-Four [Region 2]:
Michael Radford's adaption of George Orwell's foreboding literary premonition casts John Hurt and Suzanna Hamilton as lovers who must keep their courtship secret. Aside from criminalizing sex and interpersonal relationships, the ruling party in their country Oceania both fabricates reality and reconstructs history for the sake of oppressing the masses. They brainwash their citizens via large, propaganda-spewing TV monitors installed in their living rooms, which also inspect everyone's activities. Hurt and Hamilton are among the few we see desperately trying to fight the system by keeping control of their thoughts and beliefs. While the atmosphere becomes a bit too stifling at times, the images are quite striking with their muted colors and dilapidated sets. In an interesting bit of casting, Richard Burton costars (in his final role) as a government agent who surreptitiously exposes Hurt to the ideas of resistance. Unlike many like-minded films, 1984 does not offer a flashy vision of the future, but then that aspect makes it feel all the more real. In an age when more and more of our everyday activities are being scrutinized, Big Brother may not be so far off after all. --Bryan Reesman

Nineteen Eighty-Four [Region 2] Reviews:
Beware, obama reform ration is the blueprint for this to come.
2009-12-06 - This is the best movie ever made because it shows what can happen if someone gets in power and takes away our freedom and rights. The health reform 2,000 page bill is the blueprint for this movie to become reality. it wil happen if obama is allowed his reform and allowed to violate and destroy our constitution.

I love the initial soundtrack and found the replacement one caused the movie to be severly lacking and was hugely dissapointed. I hope it is re-done with the original soundtrack. This movie is so different but needs to be watched.
In particular watch for the Second Minute Hate and the Tele Screen.

It makes one fully appreicate all the millions of lives who died for our freedom and how easy one person with a certain agenda with too much power and people with too little education of history become easy targets for this to occur.

I hope this is re-done with the original sound track. For many years I could not find this movie. It was like it had disappeared as it still shows by the high price for a new copy and no DVD or blu-ray.

I most certainly would reccomment it to everyone particulary young people.I would also rec. "Soylent Green".

Nineteen Eighty Four (1984)....In Russia TV watches you.
2009-11-26 - 1984 (Nineteen Eighty Four): 8 out of 10: Most films simply dont age all that well. Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington for example simply doesnt have the same impact today that it did in 1993. (Both gay people in general and AIDS in particular are simply less scary today.) In another example we have seen both technology and fashion move so fast that the futuristic phones in many a seventies sci-fi movie look positively ancient today not to mention the burnt orange and avocado green color scheme of the future that so many seventies sci-fi are stuck with. (Im looking your way Rollerball.)

So how has a film, released when people outside of American colleges actually believed communism worked, aged today?

Brilliantly. If I say so myself. If anything the film works better today than it did in 1985.

For starters the film itself is timeless. Nothing about the film gives away the date that it was made. Only the fact I know who John Hurt and Richard Burton are gives a hint to time period. The film itself could have been released in theaters last week.

Since the film comments heavily on torture in its last act and on Big Brotherism throughout, if released today it undoubtly would be seen as a direct attack on both the Bush administration and the British Labor government. In fact many scenes are a clear attack on the Bush administrations torture policy and the endless war on Terrorism. One could almost never believe the film was about Communism at all. Modern audiences today would laugh at such a quaint notion.

With few exceptions I have never known a film so timeless. Heck it is one better than simple timelessness. It is actually more relevant today than when it was made. The idea of government using an endless indefinable and unwinnable war to curtail its subjects freedoms is right from todays headlines; whether you are discussing the war on drugs, terrorism, or global warming the results are the same. All the good intentions in the world simply mean less freedom for you and your children. For the greater good no less.

Orwell would be shocked at the creativity governments today would use to curtail peoples freedoms and lives. Or perhaps he wouldnt and that is why his story is so timeless and most remarkably the film based on it is as well.

Oh and the film is fun with a brilliant and perfectly cast John Hurt in the primary role as the put upon and tortured everyman. Richard Burton, not chewing scenery for once, in a role with gravitas; his last I believe. Also super cute and believable Suzanna Hamilton who looks like a real woman both in and out of her clothes as the love interest and the catalyst for desire of change. And a special kudos to a fantastic direction by Michael Radford and production design by Allan Cameron. The really capture a place and time that as I have said before is timeless.

In conjunction with Terry Gilliams similarly themed Brazil, Nineteen Eighty Four is one of the best movies about the early 21st century made during the Nineteen Eighties.



Awful movie - Good book
2009-08-20 - The movie was basically awful, while the book revealed some real truths that happen when a society is taken in bondage by its evil government, wanting to change all truth into lies, whether that be history or morality, etc, all through THOUGHT CONTROL. Some may see this happening in America now, read the book and see if you see the similarities. But the movie was awful, it took forever to even begin to reveal the slightest hint of what the story was about, and then left you still wondering. Nothing much was made clear, and the movie seemed to focus more on sensual stimulation thru nudity than dealing with what the story was all about, a nation's calling good evil and evil good and forcing its subjects to believe it. To me, the movie is very slow moving and boring as far as the real story is concerned. I see this movie as a serious waste of time. It really disappointed me, and I wonder whether it would disappoint George Orwell as well. I believe the whole point was just missed in the movie, and it was hard to see any point at all. (The book is just the opposite, I would highly recommend that everyone read it.)

Missing in edit
2009-07-07 - I love this movie and I own it on VHS and DVD. However, some of the VHS movie has been edited out of the DVD. For example, the scene where Winston and Julia go to O'Brian and want to join the resistance is ommited. This is an important scene, one minute Winston is reading the Goldstein book and the next scene they are being arrested by the thought police. I wonder if they will issue a DVD with all of the Omitted scenes back in. Otherwise, a great movie.

1984
2009-07-02 - We have not watched entire movie yet although this is a DVD we having been wanting for a long time after seeing snipets.